


It Takes a Village

by NicoleAnell



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/pseuds/NicoleAnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabble/ficlet series based on a prompt from sunshine_queen. ("Gaius, Caprica, Ellen and Tigh have joint custody of Liam.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Takes a Village

**1**

Her child was born almost unnervingly healthy and was the smallest living thing she'd touched yet. The doctor called him "strong" and she impossibly thought, _yes_. This would become a pattern for all of them: projecting anything worthwhile in themselves onto him. He did look like Saul to her, with his newborn wrinkles and confused expressions, as much as something that small could look like anyone. His name was Liam and he was the first child born on Earth, though people were subtly relieved when a human child followed two weeks later. Saul borrowed and held him while she rested, not exactly sleeping but stretching out on the cot and replaying his bizarrely alive new features in her mind. Hours may have passed because she next heard Ellen say, "Saul? I think Caprica would like to hold him again," in a gently amused voice. She'd spent much of this time laying her hand on Gaius instead, because she knew he could not shake the feeling of being awkward in the room, but every moment he didn't flee for the door was a smaller and smaller miracle, until it seemed not only possible but likely he would stay.

*******

 **2**

Liam spends every second weekend with his daddy and Ellen in their house, except for once he asked why it's not every first weekend and how you tell the difference, and Gaius picked him up from the floor and said "He's a genius, honestly" and then spent a seriously long time explaining the relative time paradox to him, which was confusing, but he likes to hear Gaius talk in his funny voice and he likes being up off the floor and carried over by the cows. Sometimes the cows scare him but that's why Gaius holds him far away and he's an astronaut. He sees daddy and Ellen almost every day anyway, sometimes they even come over in the morning before he wakes up, but it's only the weekend he sleeps over in their house. Their house is a blue tent.

*******

 **3**

It was Gaius who was most obsessed with getting him to speak, primarily getting him to say the word "Gaius." Proud as he was of his own vocabulary, he felt sure this was the most crucial development skill for a baby, followed by walking-very-quickly and morality -- the three were essentially in that order. He remembered Hera had taken a disturbing amount of time to form anything resembling words and sentences, and sought to do better with his second non-biological child. In no time Liam was calling Caprica a name which sounded like "umma" more than anything, and this was very encouraging. Mostly it pained him to not understand the amount of crying Liam did, even if it stopped moments later; Gaius thought this would help him attach names to his feelings, and give them all a much better sense of what Gaius could fix for him (general anxiety, occasional diaper), or when he could just go back to sleep.

"Enough I trust that shifty motherfrakker around my son to begin with," Saul would say.

"It's what Caprica wants," Ellen smiled magnanimously. Her hair would look quite glossy and Cylon-goddess-like when she did. "And we agreed. It takes a village, Saul. You can't just keep him on a leash until he's eighteen,"

"I'll trust him _less_ with Baltar when he's eighteen," Saul grumbled back. "And with whatever's left of that frakkin' cult around." Saul seemed to be going out of his way to fill the swear jar Ellen had made to keep their profanity in check. They eventually relabeled it "college fund."

The fact these conversations would sometimes happen directly in _front_ of Baltar made him all the more committed to his language project. " _Gai_ us," he would say, exaggerating his mouth, woefully unprepared for the flood that would come when Liam finally settled on "Dai-ya" as his name. This achievement came with a gift for telling Gaius stories about his baby life that were both incoherent and very, very long, leaving Gaius both agonized and prouder than he'd ever been in his life.

*******

 **4**

Liam shows the picture to his mother of their house and how many trees it's made of, it's made of _wood_ like some of the fences, and he draws her and him and Gaius inside it. He draws Daddy and Ellen when they come over, and he draws some other people in red and yellow colors with no faces.

"It's the people who came to our house," he tells his mother, but she doesn't understand, so he says, "The ones with the big matches." He'd drawn them and everything. Mama holds him so hard it hurts a little in his shoulder, she didn't want him to remember that, but he remembers it even more now because she did it that night also. She was holding him too hard and he felt like everything was shaking but only them, and then they went outside and he was crying "Umma" because that's what he called her then, and because he was scared to go outside but she wasn't of anything. There was blood and blood and later she said it was because they let some of the animals out, they only ran away and didn't die, but he knew they did because he's honestly a genius; and he knew Gaius was blood and hurt too and that's why she was holding Liam so hard with her one hand and going toward them, and Liam didn't care it hurt, he hung his arms even harder around her and God kept him from falling.

And then she said _"Leave"_ in a voice Liam never heard before, he could feel it coming from her inside but he was shutting his eyes. She said, "Leave him or I'll tear your head off with my hands. Do you want to see if I can?" And now it is now and he drew it in a picture, and she is kissing him a hundred times. She asks if he remembers what else happened, that other people came and helped them fix everything, and they sent those people to special jail, and he says "Yes" even though he really doesn't remember, he only remembers her and the scary voice. But he believes they are in special jail and maybe dead, and he draws a picture about how they are all Cylons except Gaius and Daddy who sometimes forgets he is, and nothing hurts them.


End file.
